Early influences

Barocci was born in Urbino in central Italy into a family of artists,
who provided his early training: Battista Franco and
Bartolomeo Genga, his uncle.
Apart from two trips to Rome early in his
career was based there all his life,
painting numerous
altarpieces
there and in the surrounding towns.

Barocci acted as the linchpin that joined the great masters of the
sixteenth century with the new art, from
Carracci
to Guido Reni, that
was to emerge in the next century. Barocci trained in his native
Urbino with its incredible artistic legacy.
Around 1550 he visited Rome briefly to discover and study the work of
Raphael,
also a native of Urbino.
He seems to have been
particularly conscious of
Raphael's contribution to his own
style.

Barocci was also strongly influenced by the compositions of other painters:
Daniele da Volterra, the Venetians, and specifically
Italian painter
Correggio
who by his painterly approach, which de-emphasized the hard outlines of
objects.
From his earliest work he incorporated
Correggio's sunny grace
enriched with his personal and warm taste for Venetian colour.
He moved beyond the linear style of his teacher
Battista Franco around 1563, when he discovered Correggio's sfumato
effects, which made the defining lines of forms appear to dissolve
into delicately colored, smoky mists.
His works consist mainly of religious paintings,
which combine the influence of
Correggio and
Raphael
in a highly individual and sensitive manner.

In 1560 he went again to Rome, to work on a ceiling fresco for Pope
Pius IV's Casino in the Vatican gardens.
Barocci's decorations for the
Casino used Correggio's sfumato technique, and he became
so celebrated that they established his reputation as an up-and-coming
young painter.
But in 1563, before he had finished the project, Barocci fell ill;
he is said to have abandoned his frescos
for fear that rivals were trying to poison him, and returned to Urbino
for good, working only two hours a day due to constant pain.
The hypersensitive temperament this suggests comes out in his work.

Return to Urbino

Barocci began working for the Duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria II della
Rovere, who supported him during recurrent illnesses.
Barocci's
Portrait of Francesco Maria II della Rovere
(1972, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy) shows the patron wearing armor,
in the role of a military victor. The rich variety of textures and colors
creates an image of wealth and power.

The fact that he was not in the centre of the cultural world did not
stop Barocci from wielding decisive influence, thanks also to the way
that he stuck exactly to the Counter-Reformation's tenets on religious
art drawn up at the Council of Trent. His compositions had a simple
and direct fluidity and included touching details from everyday
life. This did not, however, stop him from attempting more ambitious
compositions from time to time, such as
The Deposition
in Perugia cathedral, 1569;
Madonna del Popolo (The Virgin of the People)
(Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, 1576-79);
The Martyrdom of St Vitale
(Milan, Brera, 1583). In these paintings we
can see how he gradually tried to introduce a feeling of wider
space.

He continued to invent new compositional strategies, incorporating the
viewer into his circle of foreground figures in the
Madonna del Popolo,
showing the Virgin Mary presenting the people to Christ. The gestures
and poses are elegant and the colors flicker with highlights and shadings.
He arranged the figures in bold diagonals, creating a sense of upward
motion and spiritual ecstasy. Barocci contrasted the exalted figures
of Mary and Jesus with images of humble, everyday people, such as
a beggar and a musician. Barocci drew studies for this and other paintings
using sticks of dry color called pastels; he was one of the first artists
to use this new medium.
The composition's emotional draw had
a strong impact on Annibale and Lodovico Carracci and many younger
painters.

His color harmonies are sharp but subtle and, although his paintings often
convey a feeling of intimate tenderness, his handling has great vigor.
Despite the fact that he worked away from the main centers of art, his work
was much sought after, his patrons including the emperor Rudolf II.
And although Barocci constantly claimed to be ill, he had a long and
productive career; he was prolific as a draughtsman as well as a painter
and was one of the first artists to make extensive use of colored chalks.

From Mannerism to the Baroque

Barocci is generally considered the greatest and most individual painter of
his time in central Italy.
Certain features of his work are thoroughly in
the Mannerist tradition: his rather indefinite treatment of space, for
example, and his delight in fluttering draperies.
Mannerist paintings typically depict figures in exaggerated poses
in a shallow compositional space intended to heighten the dramatic effect.

Barocci painted court portraits and grand religious works, especially
altarpieces and Madonna figures. His delicate handling of color and
space express a sentimental warmth and devotion that reflects his strong
religious piety. His early use of dramatic lighting and other techniques,
his directness and freshness made his work a precursor of the
Baroque.
In his later works, Barocci's spirituality and contemplative
nature emerged more clearly, pointing decisively toward the beginnings
of the Baroque.
He exerted a profound influence on his contemporaries and
on many later Baroque artists, especially
Flemish painter
Rubens.

Giovanni Bellori,
the pre-eminent biographer of the Baroque age, considered him the finest
Italian painter of his period and lamented that he had `languished in
Urbino'.
Although Bellori certainly exaggerated when he
claimed that Barocci always worked from life, the artist did draw
numerous preparatory studies. His diligence did not always please his
patrons, however, for they often waited on his commissions.

St Jerome
c. 1598;
Oil on canvas;
Galleria Borghese, Rome
In this painting, recent restoration has revealed a lion, sleeping
like a large cat in the background; it had been hidden under thick
layers of paint that had darkened with age.